David E. Daniel is the fourth president of The University of Texas at Dallas. He received his bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, and served on the faculty at UT Austin from 1980 to 1996. In 1996, he moved to the University of Illinois, finishing his service as Dean of Engineering before being appointed UT Dallas' president in 2005. From 2005 through 2008, Daniel served as Chair of the External Review Panel of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which examined the facts surrounding the performance of New Orleans’ levees during Hurricane Katrina. In 2009 Daniel served as President of The Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Science of Texas (TAMEST), which is an organization comprised of all Texas residents who have won Nobel Prizes or been elected to one of the three National Academies. Daniel was in July 2010 appointed by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council to a committee investigating the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Daniel serves on the Sandia Corporation Board of Directors, which oversees management of Sandia National Laboratory. He also serves on boards of numerous Dallas-area organizations.